Henry L Lazarus
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Science Fiction for June 2016
by Henry Leon Lazarus
Over sixty years ago, before I found
Fantasy and Science Fiction, I loved to read comics, particularly
those about super heroes. I look for great super hero tales,
especially those with solid, three dimensional characters.
Olivia Rising tells her tale three years
after the pulse that brought super powers to Earth. Her version of
super powers don’t really fit the comic versions, especially because
some of the evolved surge, broadening and widening the strength of
their power. When the only healer, Shanti, a woman of India who is
adored like Mother Theresa, surges, her power affects not just an
individual, but all people from a mile around her. The Covenant
decides she is too dangerous and sends Radiant, who can fly at the
speed of light and shoot out laser beams, to kill her. Riots ensue
and Radiant feels he has to quit the Covenant. Christina Chung goes
through transition at the same time with the ability to create
shields, super-speed, and sense potential disasters. But already
still recovering from the death of her baby brother while she was
baby sitting, her manifested powers aren’t enough to save the life
of her older sister. Sarina Baumann found dancing after being
adopted into a family that helped wean her off drugs. Her first
dance competition shows her transition allows her to make miricles.
Transition (ebook from Amazon) is only the
introduction to a four part series that promises to be very
powerful.
Storm’s Quarry is an underground
city of two cultures, joined by survival needs against the huge
storms that occasionally beset. The Nomori were gypsies whose people
frequently come with powers. The Everan rule the city and took in
the Nomori because one of them prophesied a major storm’s beginning
and end. Kesali has gotten her grandmother’s powers of Prophesy and
is engaged to the Duke’s son in an effort to unit the two peoples.
Her best friend, Nadya Gabori, has been hiding her unusual Captain
America type abilities, running over the roof tops at night while
appearing a dutiful daughter by day. Then a mind controller starts
causing murders, trying to destabilize the city, while a prophesied
storm locks the city down. Nadya is forced to use her talents as The
Iron Phoenix (paper from Bold Strokes Books) while keeping her
father, the head of the Duke’s guards, in the dark. There’s a lot of
female Zorro, as well as teenage angst in Rebecca Harwell’s fun
tale. I’m eager from more.
Samantha Bryant continues her tale of
four women treated for menopausal symptoms with a drugs that gave
them super powers. Linda became a very strong man, Jessica is able
to fly Patricia turns into a bullet proof lizard, Helen throws fire.
The person who changed them. Cindy Liu, has been getting younger and
now looks thirteen, In the second tale Jessica and Linda are
recruited to a secret government agency which has Helen locked down.
Cindy’s father, is a crazed scientist who mastered brain
transplantation and is on his fourth body. This Change of Life
(paper from Curiosity Quills Press) tale comes to a head when
Cindy’s father tries to kidnap the women to save his daughter and
the agency finds a way into his research lab. Lots of fun and I
can’t wait for the next adventure.
Alex Lamb continues his very exciting
tale of Will Kuno-Monet, a Roboteer (paper) who stopped a war and
met with Transcended species to talk them out of destroying humanity
as they had other species. Thirty years later humanity is fighting
over the new area the galaxy given by the Transcended and filled
with ruins from a species that was destroyed. A small cabal is
afraid of a civil that will destroy humanity and they have found a
planet of Nemesis (paper from Gollancz) filled with
artificially intelligent life. An attack by Nemesis robots to
destroy an illegal human settlement is set up to be discovered, and
Will sends an expedition to investigate, with the scientific half
piloted by is adopted son, Mark. Plots within plots soon set Nemesis
to attack all human settlements including Earth, and only Will and
Mark working separately can same humanity. This, like the first
tale, is an edge of the seat, impossible to put down, exciting read.
There’s a third book coming and I can’t wait.
Laura Anne Gilman has a strange version
of early nineteenth century America. Next to the growing United
States is the devils territory run by a being most call the Devil.
Isobel (Izzy to her friends) was apprenticed to the Devil, and at
sixteen that apprenticeship is over. All she knows in
serving food and cleaning up in the Saloon, so she asks her boss to
work for him full time, and he makes her his left hand and sends her
out of the roads with a rider, Gabrial Kasun, to show her the ropes
of riding the territory. Thankfully this is not a love story. What
she doesn’t know is that the territory has been attacked by an evil
spirit that is wiping out farms and small settlements. Her new job
gives her the power to deal with the problem, if she can learn how
to use it fast enough. Silver on the Road (hard from Saga
Press) is the start of what promises to be fun look at a very
magically wild west.
David B. Coe has a third tale of PI
Justis Fearsson, and ex-cop, weremyste able to work magic. This time
the case involves a woman with two kids on the run, mainly because
she’s found Shadow’s Blade (hard from Baen) and some very
bad blood mages are after her, including one who can totally drain a
person’s blood with a touch and use it to create powerful spells.
There’s a trail of dead bodies, and the bad guys even use
helicopters. There’s a trail of dead bodies around Phoenix,
including ones his ex-partner Kona is investigating. Very exciting..
Sherlock Holmes doesn’t believe in magic,
but according to Mercedes Lackey , Dr, Watson and his wife Mary are
both Elemental masters. In the case of A Study in Sable
(hard from DAW) Sherlock and Watson have to work with Nan, a
telepath, and Sarah, a medium with the ability to send ghosts
through the gate to their true end. An opera singer’s sister is
missing, and she is always surrounded by admirers. When Sarah comes
to work for her to exorcize the ghosts that fill her hotel room, she
is soon caught un in Magdelena’s von Dietersdorf’s charisma. Add in
two intelligent birds who work with Nan and Sarah and you have a
fun, pleasant adventure. Magdelena’s talent and egomania makes
her a difficult target, even for Sherlock Holmes. Fun.
Genevieve Cogman invents The
Invisible Library (paper from ROC) that connects alternate
Earths, some with mixtures of magic. Some alternate Earths have
unique books that are collected by agents of the Library. Usually
that’s a simple case. Irene is after a Grimm storybook on a world
with vampires and elves. What she doesn’t know that an evil ex-agent
of the library, Alberich is after the same thing. Another agent
Bradamant had already failed to get the book and its owner, a
vampire, had been murdered. His arch-enemy, an Elf-lord from
Liechtenstein desperately wants the book too. Irene has
also been assigned a trainee, Kai, who is special. Helping her is
the great detective Lord Vale who is trying to solve the murder
mystery. Lots of fun with a sequel promised
To Justin Croninm New York is The
City of Mirrors (hard from Ballantine Books) where zero,
the first vampire waits with his virals. After The Passage
(paper) across an America emptied by viral monsters, The Twelve
(paper) controlling vampires were destroyed and humanity is
beginning to grow again in small settlements in Texas. But Twenty
years of peace, does not mean the plague has ended. So when it
returns, only a refurbished oil tanker, the mad dream of one man,
can help humanity survive while Amy, long prophesied to save
humanity, faces the first carrier of the disease found in South
America. Nice solid ending to a well-written variation on Zombie
plague.
Hugo Award nominations for this year are \: Ancillary
Mercy by Ann Leckie (Orbit), The Cinder Spires: The
Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher (Roc), The Fifth Season
by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit), Seveneves: A Novel by Neal
Stephenson (William Morrow), and Uprooted by Naomi Novik (
paper from Del Rey which just won this year’s Nebula).
Pyr has printed the Nebula Awards Showcase
2016 (trade and edited by Mercedes Lackey) with the winners
and nominees for shorter fiction. Baen has
reprinted David Weber’s new fantasy, The Song of the South
and Lois McMaster Bujold’s fun start to Miles Vorkosigan’s
adventure, The Warrior’s Apprentice in Trade. Catherine
Asaro’s excellent Undercity which needs a sequel is
reprinted in paper
The Science Fiction Society will have its next
meeting on, June 10th 2016 at 8 p.m. at International
House on the University of Pennsylvania Campus.As usual Guests
are Welcome.
Dr. Henry Lazarus is a local Dentist and the
author of A Cycle of Gods (Wolfsinger Publications) and Unnaturally
Female (Smashwords).Check out his unified field theory at
henrylazarus.com/utf.html that suggests a simpler way to achieve
fusion generation.